Kenji's Reflection
by Katerineious
Summary: I wanted so very much to just make you proud of me . . . to get you to love me as much as you did him.


I'm sorry I've been so inactive on the site lately. It's been crazy here: changing majors, moving into a house, and a whole slew of other things. I'm sorry to anyone whose story I was reviewing on, I just haven't had time to read them, but I want to catch up soooooo badly. I wrote this as we watched a movie and it's probably the only thing I'll have time to do till summer classes end. I've worked on my other stories on scraps of paper and will have them posted as soon as I get them typed. I don't believe it is appropriate to post an entire chapter with an author's note of appology of taking so long, so please accept this one instead.

I watch _Reflection_ a lot. It's by far my favorite movie and it always makes me cry. But this time when I watched it and was waiting for the credits to end because I like to watch the very end with Kenji and Chizuru I found myself crying more because of everything he had to have felt growing up the way he did, justified or not. He's a great character, and it is so sad that we don't get to see more of him than we do. I really enjoyed the last cannon I wrote about Hiko and wanted to do one for Kenji.

Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin.

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Kenji's Reflection

I'll never understand it. Day after day I've sat here looking for the answers I seek but I doubt I will ever find. I've spent hours here, staring at these stones, crying as I hold this tattered piece of blue silk against my chest. I'll never come here and not cry. But I don't cry for him, only you.

Mother.

I miss you, Mother, I miss you so much. You were so good to me, so much more than you should have been. I was a spoiled brat as a child, I realize that, and I'm so sorry. I can't help but wonder why you and Father never had more children . . . maybe then I would have become a better person, a better son, one that was deserving of you.

Instead I ran away when you needed me most. I ran off and left you utterly alone when you needed me to comfort you more than anyone else. I knew you were getting sicker, but I was selfish and just left you there, waiting. Waiting for one of us to return.

But you must understand, Mother! I could not bear to watch you waste away your days pining for him anymore. I sickened me to the depths of my soul to watch you devote yourself so completely to him and have him sun you time and time again. It infuriated me that even though I abandoned you, you were not waiting for me . . . your son . . .

What was I supposed to do? Tell me, Mother! What did you want me to do? I thanked you for training me in Kamiya-Kashin when I was younger, but that is not the legacy I wanted. After I learnt who Father really was I swore to myself that I would become stronger than him. I wanted so very much to just make you proud of me . . . to get you to love me as much as you did him.

And I failed myself just as I failed you in both life and death because all I can do is cry. I will never come close to achieving the strength you processed. Or even that of Yahiko who learned everything from you and reminds me so much of you that it is physically painful. No, I will always be as weak as my father who took everything from you. And for that, I am sorry, Mother.

Mother . . . That word already feels so distant from me and you have not even been gone a month. You were parted from Father and myself for so much longer and even though you suffered you were still strong. But I cannot be strong because as I have already admitted to you I am as weak as that man you loved more than any other.

You should have lived a perfect life. Your heart was so big, so generous; your spirit so strong, so determined that . . . that you deserved so much more than anything any of us could have ever given you. But you have lived a harsh life since grandmother died.

Mother, I'm wiping the tears away from my eyes with the back of my hand as I laugh. I laugh because you're probably wondering how I know about that. I know because after you died and I carried your body out of the cherry orchard where you spent every day from his death to yours and brought you back home, Yahiko took me to the dojo where I held your bokken and cried for hours because I knew you were finally getting the rest you needed. Yahiko sat beside me the entire time; silent, comforting. When I finally calmed down enough I looked to him and asked him 'Why?' And do you know what, Mother? He answered me, but it was so much more than what I expected.

I expected him to tell me what I already knew. I had expected him to just say that you loved that ungrateful being that sired me so much that you couldn't live knowing that he was not coming home this time. That's what I expected but that's not what he told me. Instead he told me everything about you that I didn't know. Everything.

He told me about how grandfather harshly trained you in his grief and how you suffered when he left for war and didn't return home and left you entirely alone at sixteen. And then how you confronted Father, thinking to defeat him for dishonoring Grandfather's name, but he helped you discover who was really behind it and you asked him to stay. About how you two rescued Yahiko from the yakuza and he stayed on to become your pupil. About the man named Sagara Sanosuke who fought alongside Father more than any other and now lives in China. About the assassin Jine who kidnapped you to lure Father our. About how he saved Megumi-san and became enemies with Aoshi-san at the same time. About the man Saito Hajime who came and challenged Father here, in our dojo, and then formed an alliance him to go to Kyoto. About how Saito-san and Sanosuke-san helped Father take down an entire syndicate after Shishou taught Father the final secret of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu and how after that battle Father almost died. About how so shortly after that ordeal a man named Enishi declared war on Father and everyone he associated with in order to extract revenge for his murdered sister, Father's first wife—Himura Tomoe, Yahiko told me about her, too. About how when Father thought you were dead he went away to die and how he wouldn't listen to anyone and Tsubame eventually got through to him when Yahiko was in trouble. About how Aoshi-san discovered the truth and he, Yahiko, Sanosuke-san, and Saito-san went with Father to rescue you. I pretty much lived through everything that happened after that.

I just don't understand why you stood beside him with anything more than friendship through all that. He put you in danger so many times when it shouldn't have ever happened to begin with. I mean, how could you fall in love with a man eleven years older than you and keep harboring him and those feelings for him even after he told you that he had murdered his first wife? Why did you stay so devoted to him after he left you so many times? Why did you love him so much?

And why didn't you tell me any of this yourself? Why didn't Father tell me?

Why? Tell me why! I would have listened! I would have understood! But . . . neither of you ever told me anything . . . I only found out that he was the Hitokiri Battosai because Yahiko slipped up. I was your son! Why did you have to hide everything from me?

I'm so selfish, Mother, but I guess I take after my father in that aspect as well. You, who were never selfish with anything don't understand this, but I am. You've been gone less than a week and all I want is for you to return to me. Just for a moment, just to tell me that you did love me more than him. But you never will, maybe if I had asked for something else, but never for that. I won't ask you to directly lie to me.

I've accepted it as much as I can. I know that Father's parents were killed while he was still as small child and that Shishou raised him, but I feel it's got to be worse knowing that your parents don't love you as they should than having none at all. Well, only having one, Father was never here enough to matter anyway. Maybe if he had been you wouldn't have always been so sad . . . So many more questions for you, Mother, but why bother asking? You didn't answer me before and you won't now.

I loved you so much and I don't think I ever truly showed you that. I want you to know that. I'll keep visiting every day; maybe then you and Father will get annoyed with me and tell me what I want to know, but I doubt it. You were too patient. I love you, Mother.

Goodbye, Father, take care of Mother now that you can't run away from her . . . even you don't deserve to be alone in death.

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I don't approve of the way Kaoru was portrayed in the anime. Rurouni Kenshin is my favorite manga/anime and I feel that a tremendous disservice was done to her character there. In the manga she is shown to be tempermental, but nearly not so much as the anime and _Reflection_ shows that side of her we didn't see there and that is what I wanted to portray here. For those of you feel differently, please flame. You have to have an open mind to read and publish things on a site like this all imput is appreciated and taken into consideration.

Thank you in advance to anyone who takes time to review. I promise to get more active again as soon as possible.

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